StrangeSox

Except all that corroborating evidence.

I read it more as them willing to do anything to rationalize their focus on Saddam. UBL working with Saddam was a quick, superficial way to dismiss other concerns and keep focusing on Saddam and his nuclear weapons. edit: It's two people: "An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews" edit2: and he cites a brief that specifically references this crazy idea in the paragraph following my excerpt.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 05:55 PM) Cutler had 302 yards, 2 TDs, and 2 INTs the last time they played, and was sacked 3 times. It's not so much that the defense bothers him specifically as much as Matt Forte was his only reliable target. Knox and Hester were the #1 and #2 WRs that game. what a difference a year makes

That GWU link contains analysis of some National Security Archives that were released a year or two back. This seems like more confirmation of the idea that they were focused on regime change in Iraq from the day they took office.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 08:48 AM) To be fair, the US government gets about 500 threats like these a day, if you and these people are actually inferring they "should have known" that these were actually going to happen... I'll just shake my head and leave it at that. "An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day." It's not about picking up on one particular threat out of many, it's about them becoming hyper-focused on Saddam Hussein right after taking office, leading them to ignore more credible threats, and continuing to focus on Saddam after 9/11. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB326/index.htm

The Deafness Before The Storm The Bush administration was even more negligent than we thought:

QUOTE (lostfan @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 08:14 PM) http://www.salon.com/2012/09/10/why_i_left_the_gop/ This was a good piece but man is Salon's new web design harsh on my eyes.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 08:54 PM) I have nothing to contribute about the actual issue at hand but teachers really do b**** more than any other profession. Based on what my wife tells me, this is true.

Here's the CT segments about the strike: http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2012/09/10/...teachers-strike http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2012/09/10/...reform-illinois

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 04:12 PM) But they can't post on Soxtalk! Hey buddy keep missing the point of that one example everyone here could relate to!

Chicago Tonight had a couple of good segments on this tonight.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 03:04 PM) Apparently about 40% of the world's websites are currently down thanks to an Anonymous DOS attack on GoDaddy. huh, that's why things kept messing up for me today.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 02:37 PM) Yeah, welcome to life on earth. Life on earth, where labor can strike to protest unfair treatment thanks to previous generations' often-bloody struggles.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 02:33 PM) Here's my question: when they accepted the position of being a teacher, did they not know the conditions of their work hours beforehand? They did! But now CPS is trying to change them without additional compensation. (For the record, my wife doesn't work for CPS and is less pro-union than I am. My stance isn't because of my wife's profession.)

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 02:32 PM) Do you realize how silly this is? "Well, he's wasting time on his job so I wanna be able to waste time too! It's not fair that he doesn't have to work hard!" You have a three month vacation every year! Plus winter break and spring break. You're missing the point, which is that teachers can't slack off nearly as much as many other professions, and that needs to be taken into account if you're going to point out the time they get off. Contract hours for teachers are somewhere around 1200 a year versus the 2080 for your standard 40-hour work week employee. Different studies have found that when you take into account non-contract hours (grading at home/staying late etc.), teachers work something like 1600 hours a year. It's less than your typical 9-5 year-round job, but my point is that those hours they are working are often more productive than other professions.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 02:25 PM) Oh this is such bs...they take mental breaks all the time...They give tests, assign their students time to read, etc., etc. I've dated plenty of teachers, btw...they have plenty of time to text me all f***ing day while I am trying to work. The fact that they aren't able to post on Soxtalk all day like you and I boils down to the fact that they don't work at computers all day with internet access, not because they have some terrible working conditions. Yes, they have to stay in the classroom and supervise, but they probably don't have to do some of the difficult things I have to do during my day, either. I'm sure they aren't reading through FERC Orders all day or trying to explain to attorneys why we our electric system doesn't work the way some regulator in Washington DC wants it to. Most of us have good and bad things about our jobs. Teachers are no different. I've got two very good friends that are ironworkers. I know they are not always "laboring." It's also one of the most dangerous jobs in this country...but I suppose that is outweighed by the teachers who risk their lives every day with those difficult algebraic equations. I admire teachers for what they do, I don't mean to imply that I don't. As someone who holds a worthless History degree, that is one of the career paths available to me. I chose against it because adolescent children piss me off. I haven't been saying that teachers have some terrible working conditions, just that, when they're at work, they're required to be "on" more than many other professionals. I haven't said that their jobs are the most difficult in the world nor dangerous.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 02:28 PM) Not even in the slightest. You are at WORK. You are being paid to do a JOB. That is part of the problem with this country. "I don't have any down time when I'm at work!" That's because you should be busy WORKING. Uh, yeah, that's the point. By the nature of their job, teachers can't waste nearly as much time at work as every one of us posting in this thread right now (I'm off today, so I'm only wasting my own time!)

soxbadger, every post you make during working hours only helps my point.

They get lunch breaks, but so do most workers. They're required to be "on" more constantly than many other professions.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 01:55 PM) I'm sure that is what their concern is, too. Can you say that it's not? It was meant to point out that they can't take mental breaks throughout the day like a lot of professionals can. Are you at work right now, posting on SoxTalk instead of doing your job? A teacher doesn't have that luxury throughout the day. Yes, they get more time off, but when they're at work, they're working, not dicking around on the internet. How often have you worked at job sites? Let's just say that while there's difficult work, there's often a lot of standing around. On top of that, ironworkers are often unionized and would be striking as well if they were suddenly being required to work 25% longer with no additional compensation or improved working conditions. No. Unfortunately, many private schools do not have unionization, but that's an excellent example of why unions aren't an anachronistic holdover and why they're still important. You'd think wrong.

I'd like to point out again that one of the things they're striking over is classroom size and keeping it down. That's directly beneficial to the students.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 01:33 PM) And all the s***ty, lazy workers can be forever protected from termination. No they can't; it may be difficult to remove a bad teacher for good reasons, but that's so it's difficult to remove a good teacher for bad reasons. But that's a specific argument against specific tenure rules in teachers' unions, not against unionization in general.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 01:32 PM) So where is the cut off between "racing to the bottom" and fighting for more? Somewhere between believing that workers should accept whatever s*** deal management hands them and stopping the continual decline of the middle class and impoverishment of the working and non-working poor.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 01:29 PM) Its not unfortunate. Unions used to make sense, now they fight for more rights then regular humans get. Unions werent created so that workers could get better perks than everyone, they were created so they could get equal treatment. Union members are "regular humans." But unions were the ones to first fight, often literally, for the workers' rights we all enjoy. Unions still make sense since management still has immensely more bargaining power than labor. Labor struggle isn't about equal treatment (it's not a discrimination/civil rights movement) but bargaining power for labor, and most workers, especially with the decline of unions, do not have that. The first unionized shops that were able to stand against violent crackdowns had better perks than everyone else, but their power and their influence grew to the point that 5-day, 40-hour weeks are the norm along with a host of other accomplishments. I find it disheartening that the typical response to one group of workers having comparatively better wages, benefits, employment protections and bargaining power is for other groups of workers to tear them down, to decry them for not suffering like the rest of us.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Sep 10, 2012 -> 01:22 PM) Then we can borrow from China to pay every worker in the U.S.'s crazy pension and benefit plans. Alternatively, we can close the ever-widening wealth and income gaps instead of racing to the bottom.